Govt. Promoting Safety Or Strikes?

The Labour Minister is going on another anti-business
offensive with her plans to give new powers to unions to
shut down workplaces under the guise of concerns about
safety, National Industrial Relations spokesperson Max
Bradford said today.

"The review of Health and Safety in
Employment Act has laudable aims to make workplaces safer -
but there's some worrying aspects of the Government's
plans.

"The proposals to give employee health and safety
representatives the power to close down production in
hazardous situations have significant potential to be abused
by unions.

"If industrial relations are getting strained,
or employees are in the middle of an industrial dispute a
union could shut down production at whim citing health and
safety.

"It gives unions another tool to use to get
control of workplaces.

"Expanding the right to prosecute
to any individual is likely to lead to vexatious litigation
without proper research into the cause of the accident.

"As Helen Clark tries to extend an olive branch to business
- Margaret Wilson comes up with another idea that snaps the
branch.

"The answer to improving health and safety is to
strike the right balance in the workplace, but instead the
Labour Minister has again gone too far in favour of the
union," Max Bradford said.

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